D'ville Tom Sez...

Wait--it wasn't Boston. It was across the bridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'm hanging out in a cute little club/art gallery called the Lilypad where the moment captured in this photo occurred. I was uncharacteristically sitting in with some serious jazzers, most notably a drummer with whom I had played many years before, back in Indiana. Drummer Joe Hunt is now on the faculty of the New England Conservatory, but when I met him he was playing around Bloomington, shortly before heading east to meet up…

This is a the day when we like to look back at our many visits to Ireland over the years. We did a lot of memorable shows there, met a lot of special people, and lingered post-tour multiple times to ramble around the countryside.

We had tremendous audiences in Dublin, enthusiastic and ready to party. Irish audiences always clapped and sang along, even on songs where it was unexpected. I never thought of “I Am…I Said” as an audience participation number, but they made it one.

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and I found myself looking back at a couple of my first gigs when I arrived in Los Angeles, both of them with remarkable women.

The first was at a club called the Ruddy Duck, quite near where we now live, playing Hammond B3 organ with the Mary Kaye Trio. Mary came from a royal musical family in Hawaii and Las Vegas, where she was a giant star in the early days.

I wasn’t really an organist, but I managed to cover it, and it was great to have a steady gig. Serious…

This is the project I’ve been working on for the last couple of years. More precisely. I should say this is the project I’ve been working on for the last fifty year.

In the mid 1960s, besides gigging with the local musicians in my home area of Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana, I started my own band. It was a jazz/rock/psychedlic/noise/comedy/magic outfit called the Masters of Deceit. It was greeted by reactions that ranged from apathy to antipathy, with tiny pockets of respect.

Davi Det Hompson (1939–1996), also known as David E. Thompson, was a Fluxus book artist, concrete poet, creator of mail art, sculptor and painter from Indiana, who lived and worked in Indianapolis, and later Richmond, Virginia. His chosen professional name was a nom d'art transposition of the letters of his name.

In 1969 he participated in "Various—Art by Telephone," a vinyl LP compilation by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, which also included sound works by John Baldessari, Dick Higgins, Ed…